Digital Wayang Kulit

Here's a nine minute demo of a Digital Wayang Kulit (Indonesian shadow puppetry) program developed at the MSc in Digital Education program at University of Edinburgh. The 2D figure is controlled by the digital Dalang (puppeteer) using a Gametrak controller and a Wiimote.

There have been a lot of shadow puppet inspired digital puppetry demos created over the years (this one is from 2013), but I love how fluid the movement of this one is.

Special thanks to Jane for submitting this!

Unbelievably impressive demo of the Unreal Engine 4

It's been far, far too long since I posted an update here on Machin-X, but I may be (finally) returning to some digital puppetry work in the near future and when I saw this demo for the Unreal Engine 4 I had to share it.

It is, well, pretty unreal:

The Kite open world demo created in Unreal Engine 4 features a diverse and beautifully realized 100 square mile landscape. Everything is generated completely in real-time at 30fps and includes fully dynamic direct and indirect illumination, cinematic depth of field and motion blur, and procedurally placed trees and foliage.

Real-time 3D sure has come a long way since I first worked on a TV pilot for a proposed kids' series using cardboard cut-outs and blob tracking with a webcam to create some 2D flash animation almost a decade ago.

I wonder where this technology will go in the ten years or so?

CGI Twiddlebugs on Sesame Street

The Twiddlebugs, a small family of insects that live in Ernie's window box, have been a stable of Sesame Street for decades. Traditionally, they've always been conventional puppets, but the show's newest season has been featuring new CGI versions of the Twiddlebugs this year.

I'm not sure if these CGI Twiddlebugs were created with conventional 3D animation, or if they are actually created using digital puppetry like Elmo's World. Does anyone out there know for sure?

Either way, things have certainly come a long way since the good old days.

Gorillaz live @ the Grammys

Madonna shares the stage with the Gorillaz at the 2006 Grammy Awards.

Over at PuppetVision last Novemember, I featured a video of the animated "virtual band" Gorillaz performing live at the MTV Music Awards in Europe. Well, they've gone and taken this to the next level. Check out Gorillaz performing with Madonna live at the Grammy Awards last week. Especially cool is the part where Madonna walks behind Murdoc.

ILM is reportedly developing technology for a Gorillaz world tour in 2007. How much do you want to bet they'll be throwing some kind of digital puppetry technique in to the mix to allow for some wickedly-cool audience interaction? If they're not, they should be. In fact, as great as ILM is, if you ask me the Jim Henson Creature Shop should be all over this.

Link via Gorillaz-Unofficial.com.

Digital Fraggles?

Mathew Patrick Sullivan's fan rendering of Fraggle Rock's Red Fraggle (Red Fraggle © Jim Henson Productions).

Jim Henson Productions has announced plans for a Fraggle Rock movie. Speculation is that this will be similar to the original CBC/HBO series with the conventional Fraggle puppets in "Outer Space" (the show's term for the world outside Fraggle Rock), but gather together any rabid Fraggle fans and they'll instantly start speculating about puppets being replaced with pixels*.

Normally, I'd think that was a horrible idea, but after seeing some work-in-progress 3D fan art of Red Fraggle created by Mathew Sullivan in Maya I can't help wondering, what would a digital Fraggle Rock would be like?

Here's some pics of Mathew's model:

Front View

Side View

Rear View

...after all, Henson has the technology.

*Note: I can't emphasize enough that the above images are fan art. Very little information has been released by Henson about the forthcoming Fraggle Rock movie and there is no indication that anything other than conventional puppets will be used.